Item — HN Reader

I have been to both Mississippi and Portugal.

I've had a great time eating ribs in Tupelo and hiking in Peneda-Geres National Park near Porto.

Lisbon and Porto is a pretty city but Portugal as a whole has historically been an underdeveloped laggard in Europe due to political mismanagement (just like Mississippi) and only developed thanks to massive cash+infrastructure transfers by the EU, just like how Mississippi and other southern states were transformed via FDR's New Deal and LBJ's Great Society.

Not sure what the relevance of those eras is to what we're discussing. Mississippi was also very afluent back in much darker days, but that was close to two centuries ago, and the New Deal is a century ago.

Modern day Mississippi is not even comparable with Portugal, even though the latter is still an "underdeveloped laggard in Europe".

And Mississippi has been that way (developing-worldish) for many decades.